


i like the sad eyes, bad guys [mouth full of white lies]

by pagan_mint



Category: Far Cry (Video Games), Far Cry 4
Genre: M/M, Mind Games, Self-Harm, TWO Sabals, Whump, don't do drugs kids, double the dickatry, let Ajay Ghale rest 2k17, post-Yuma mission, what's worse than one Sabal?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-29
Updated: 2017-04-29
Packaged: 2018-10-25 12:09:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10763982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pagan_mint/pseuds/pagan_mint
Summary: “You tried tokill yourself,” Sabal snarls, and it hits Ajay for the first time that this genuinely affected the other man, is continuing to affect him. “You cut your own throat while imagining that I wasbiting it open.And don’t think that I didn’t hear what you said, brother. Whatever demonic version of me you were hallucinating told you that I wanted you todie.I can’t imagine what that must have been like – how you can stand to have me here, now, touching you like this – ”"Well, I knew it wasn’t you,” Ajay says, a little confused. “I knowyoufrom – fromYuma’syou.”Sabal stills, then pushes back to look into his eyes. “There are few who would know or care to make that distinction,” he responds softly.





	i like the sad eyes, bad guys [mouth full of white lies]

**Author's Note:**

> song title taken from "ghost" by halsey
> 
> //
> 
> this was going to be a submission for selfcestfest 2016 but it wasn't selfcest-y enough or even completed, so you get it now! congratulations

Ajay stumbles out of the mine, ears ringing and sticky with blood and trying not to scream. It’s not his blood – he doesn’t think – but he can’t be sure, because he can’t trust his own mind and perceptions. Not now, not with the memory of Yuma’s touch still stinging his skin, the insidious whisper of her words hissing in the back of his brain.

The Kyrati sun is bright and warm, a welcome contrast to the darkness that has been Ajay’s world for the last – how long? How long was he in there? He doesn’t realize he’s asked the question out loud until an answer comes, a familiar voice speaking in unfamiliar tones, haughty and vicious and every word dripping with venom.

“Too long, brother. I expected better from you, son of Mohan.” Sabal sneers at him, all cruelty and self-righteousness and unchecked aggression. Ajay knows it’s not really him – it’s Yuma’s version of Sabal, a projection of the drugs, of Shangri-La – but he seems painfully real, the only sign that he isn’t the way he flickers every so often, like static on a TV screen. “ _Kalinag reborn_ , the people say. So tell me: how did killing him feel?”

“You’re not real,” Ajay whispers, his voice rough. “You’ll go away. I just – I have to get home, and – ”

“And what?” the not-Sabal asks, crouching down. The motion draws Ajay’s attention to himself; he hasn’t realized that he has fallen to his knees until now. “Sleep it off? Forget about me? About _this_?” He makes a sharp, sweeping gesture with one arm, and scoffs when Ajay flinches from it. “The prodigal son, the savior of Kyrat, nearly defeated and taken advantage of by a mere woman. Even if you forget, the Golden Path will not.”

“Stop it,” Ajay barks, fumbling for his radio. “Shut up. You’re not – you’re not _him_.”

“You don’t know that, brother,” the apparition spits. “I could be more like him than you think.”

“You’re nothing like him,” Ajay mumbles, pressing the button on his radio. “Hello? Hello, can anyone – can anyone hear me? This is Kali – this is Ajay.” He tries to think of his last name, can’t. “Ajay – uh – I’m with the Golden Path, I just killed – Yuma’s dead. I’m at the mine – ”

“No, you’re not,” the phantom hums, and Ajay looks up and around and sees that he’s right. Before falling down, he apparently managed to walk for quite a distance; nothing about his surroundings is familiar, and the mine is nowhere in sight.

“No, I’m not,” he repeats faintly into the radio. “I’m – not sure… where I am…” His voice trails off, and he releases the talk button.

Immediately there’s a burst of static, followed by a frantic voice. “Ajay? Ajay, are you alright? Tell me where you are!”

Ajay frowns, blinks. “S… Sabal?”

“Maybe,” says the projection of the Golden Path leader. He walks in a circle around the younger man, reaching up to lay a hand against Ajay’s face and brush a thumb across his eyebrow. The worst part is that Ajay can _feel_ it – the heat of his skin, the roughness of calloused fingertips. “Then again, I’m right here, so…”

 “Be _quiet_ ,” Ajay snaps, clenching the radio in his hand and stepping out of the thing’s reach. “Sabal, if that’s you, if you can hear me, I did it. I killed Yuma. But she had – she blew something into my face, and I – I’m not sure I know what’s real – ”

“I’m plenty real,” the fake Sabal says, stepping into Ajay and making him nearly trip over himself in his haste to back away. As it is, he stays upright but drops the radio, the clamor of voices that erupts from it a distant roar on the fringe of his consciousness. “Don’t I feel _real_ , brother?”

“Don’t call me that,” Ajay whispers. The apparition has backed him into a corner, some mountain crevasse out of sight of the road. Himalayan rock digs into his hips and shoulders, the edge of the sensation fuzzy like all of his senses at the moment. He realizes that his hands are trembling and brings them up to his face, bleakly unsurprised to see that his gloves are darkened with blood.

He starts to peel them off, but a hand catches both of his wrists together in a firm grip before he can make any progress. “Allow me, _brother_ ,” says the phantom Sabal, and Ajay’s startled gaze flickers up to meet a hooded emerald one. Neither of them break eye contact as a tongue flickers out past scarred lips and wraps around Ajay’s right index finger, pulling it into a mouth that shouldn’t be real, shouldn’t _feel_ real, but it’s hot and wet and it absolutely grounds Ajay in a way that nothing else is at the moment.

“I’m – th-that’s not my blood,” Ajay says weakly, and the not-Sabal pulls away for long enough to growl “I _know_ ” before swallowing it back down, this time taking Ajay’s middle finger along with the other one.

The next time he pulls away, he grazes his teeth along the bottom of Ajay’s fingers, stopping at their tips to bite down on the loose leather there. Ajay closes his eyes when the apparition starts to tug at the glove, and when he opens them again, his hand is naked, exposed to the air and elements of Kyrat.

“You don’t believe in Kyra,” the not-Sabal hums, tracing Ajay’s palm lines with a finger just above the surface of the skin. His head dips down, a kiss grazing the space at the base of Ajay’s wrist. “And you don’t believe in the cause. Your father’s cause.”

“Never said I did,” Ajay gasps. The apparition is too close for comfort, pressing in further, dipping his head into the crook of Ajay’s neck to whisper against the delicate skin there. “His cause. Not mine.”

“But you believe in something, or you wouldn’t be here. Someone. You believe in me. In _him_.” Dry lips press against Ajay’s pulse point, and the son of Mohan goes still. “Even now, even after you’ve seen what I am.”

“What are you?” Ajay murmurs, his lips barely moving, his eyes unseeing despite the fact that they’re wide open and gazing off into the distance.

“I’m the future,” the apparition purrs. “I am what is not now, but what will be. I’m what you’ve known all along, brother.” Teeth on his throat, grazing across his suicide vein. “ _I’m the tiger_.”

“The wh – ” Ajay begins, only to drown his own words in a cry of pain as the not-Sabal bites down. What felt like human teeth now feel like fangs, hungry and visceral as they tear into fragile flesh. Despite its mouth being otherwise occupied, the apparition still speaks, its breath as hot as the blood dripping down the elegant line of Ajay’s neck.

“Kyrat must be cleansed, son of Mohan. The dirt of the unfaithful, the liars and traitors and the followers of Yalung, will be washed from the land, and it will blossom and be born anew. A reckoning is coming, brother. Do you plan to watch it pass, or will you shape it to your liking?”

Before Ajay can even think of how to respond, someone shouts his name in a voice ragged with panic and desperation. Still, he doesn’t fully register the presence of another person until they are practically on top of him, continuing to shout and tug frantically at his wrists. The physical contact jolts Ajay out of whatever daze he’s been in, and for the first time he realizes that both of his hands are near his throat, gripping the handle of his kukri. The bite of teeth becomes the bite of steel, and the previously indistinct person is abruptly thrown into sharp clarity.

“S… Sabal?” Ajay asks weakly, his hands dropping to his sides, the kukri clattering to the rocks on the ground beneath his feet. “Are you – ”

“Stop talking,” Sabal snaps – at least, it looks more like Sabal than the last one, his brow furrowed with concern and concentration. He’s pulled a Golden Path scarf from one of his pockets, is pressing it to the gash in the side of Ajay’s neck – the jagged gash that Ajay apparently created himself, doesn’t remember creating at all. The last hours of his life are already shattering into pieces, falling out of his reach; he tries to catch some of the memories, but the only ones he gets a grip on are ones he doesn’t want. Yuma and Kalinag, teeth and a dark, flickering _something_ that spits venom in the form of familiar words. _Mohan. Brother. Kyra_.

This Sabal is blurting something into his radio, and Ajay waits until he’s finished to ask the question he needs answered. “Hey,” he whispers – because whispering is all he can do, and even that sounds rough and shattered and barely audible to his own ears. “Are – are you – ”

He can’t finish the question. He can’t, he _won’t_ , because he’s never been so unsure of himself and it’s so important that the answer be _yes_. He doesn’t need to; this Sabal looks up at him, and his gaze softens from hard anxious edges to a softer, more affectionate concern.

“Yes, brother,” he says in a rush, and he’s reaching up to frame Ajay’s face with his hands, his touch firm but gentle, with none of the unspoken threat the previous version held. “This is real. I am real. And I am truly sorry. You should not have had to experience that alone. Someone should have – _I_ should have gone with you, been waiting for you at the very least. Don’t speak,” he says, his voice sharpening very slightly as Ajay opens his mouth. He adjusts a hand so that he can brush a clean, calloused thumb against the dry cracks of Ajay’s lower lip. “You’re hurt, and whatever she gave you – whatever she did to you – it’s still in your system.”

“Oh,” Ajay says, the word little more than a resigned puff of air. Sabal supports him as his knees finally give out underneath of him, strong hands guiding him on his slide down the mountain wall to the ground. Unconscious of the action, Ajay reaches out for his kukri; before he can touch it, a scuffed boot kicks it out of his range, then steps hard on his grasping hand.

“Did you think it would be that easy?” the not-Sabal purrs. “I’m not just a side effect of whatever shit that bitch poured into you, _brother_. I’m a vision. I’m the future.” He crouches by Ajay’s side, putting even more of his weight on the hand, and Ajay can’t help but let out a slight cry as the apparition grips his chin and twists his head painfully to force eye contact. “Are you going to tell him? That you’ve seen what he becomes, what he _really_ is?”

“Ajay,” the real Sabal says firmly, and then a hand is turning him gently away from the apparition. “Ajay, I don’t know what you’re seeing, but you need to listen to me. It’s not real. What is real is that you’re holding – you’re holding your kukri by the blade, and if you don’t stop, you are going to cut off your own fingers. Please, brother. Let go.”

Ajay closes his eyes, nods, forcibly loosens his grip in a hand he hadn’t realized he was holding anything with. When he opens his eyes again and looks back, the apparition is no longer there, and the ground is stained with his blood.

“I’m going to wrap your hand,” says the real Sabal, and Ajay’s gaze snaps to him, suddenly worried.

“Don’t,” he blurts.

“I have to,” Sabal murmurs, his voice forcibly calm. “You’re losing too much blood, you’ve lost too much already. If I don’t stop the bleeding, you will die.”

The injury in Ajay’s neck throbs as he clenches his teeth, making a muscle in his jaw twitch. “No, it’s not… don’t lick it again,” he insists. He looks at his hand, vaguely aware that Sabal has gone very still. “That can’t be hygienic.”

“That wasn’t him,” says the not-Sabal, crouching next to him. His voice is rougher than it has been, with an agitated edge that Ajay recognizes after a moment as jealousy. “I did that. The one who isn’t lying to you, the one who was there for you when you needed me to be.”

Ajay turns to stare at the apparition, incredulous. “Are you trying to _justify_ yourself?” he rasps. “You made me try to cut my own throat!”

“I didn’t _make_ you do anything. _He_ didn’t think you would come back alive. Neither of them did,” the phantom hisses, referencing Amita. “It’s not my fault that you simply tried to carry out what you knew both of them wanted from you.”

Ajay lunges forward, ignoring the pain it causes him. “ _Sabal doesn’t want me dead_ ,” he snarls. The not-Sabal stares back at him with unusual complacency, looking almost pitying.

“Would he tell you if he did?” he asks softly.

“ _Ajay_ ,” the real Sabal says insistently, “don’t look at him. Look at me. Ajay, look at _me_ ,” and when the son of Mohan fails to respond, the Golden Path leader lays the palm of his hand along the far side of Ajay’s face and physically turns his gaze.

“I’m real. I’m here. He’s not,” Sabal says sharply, his green eyes burning like the depths of the candle flames scattered throughout Kyrat. Ajay looks at him, through him, not sure who to pay attention to, not sure who to believe. He must have said so out loud, because Sabal’s gaze becomes even more intense and his fingers slide up into Ajay’s hair.

“Believe me,” he pleads. Ajay blinks, looking from Sabal’s eyes down to where his free hand is tangled with Ajay’s injured one, putting pressure against the cut with Ajay’s previously abandoned glove and getting blood all over his fingers. The son of Mohan tries to recoil, but Sabal holds him steady, pulling him in closer, pressing their foreheads together.

“Close your eyes, brother,” he murmurs, and Ajay clings to the assurance in his voice, does what he’s told, prays that all of this will be over soon. “Focus on what’s real. On what you can feel. Breathe with me. Only breathe, nothing else.” He withdraws his hand from Ajay’s hair, trails his fingers gently down the younger man’s face and along his jawline, rests two fingers briefly on the center of quivering lips before placing his hand in the center of Ajay’s chest. “Copy my movements. Do as I do.”

His eyes still closed, Ajay brings up his gloved hand and tremulously lays his palm on Sabal’s chest. The older man presses back into his touch, and Ajay unconsciously sucks his bottom lip in between his teeth as his fingers spread across the solid expanse of muscle beneath them. Sabal’s chest rises and falls with deep, deliberate breathing, and Ajay follows his lead, sucking in oxygen he hadn’t realized he was lacking.

Air alone can’t compensate for blood loss, however; he doesn’t realize how sleepy he is until a touch ghosts across the back of his neck and he jolts back into consciousness for a startled moment. Sabal is kneeling in front of him, letting Ajay slump into his chest and shoulder while both of his hands are occupied with putting pressure on the younger man’s injuries – so the touch couldn’t have come from him.

“Remember me, brother,” the phantom Sabal says from somewhere behind Ajay. “Remember that I didn’t lie to you.”

Ajay thinks he murmurs a response, but he can’t be sure, because whatever he says is drowned out in the rumble of car tires and the blinding sweep of headlights. He’s not sure when it got dark outside; he’s not sure of a lot of things, but he trusts the arms he’s swept into, the fingers that flutter over his injuries, the accented voices chattering indistinguishable words all around him.

“Hold on, brother,” someone says – Sabal says. He sounds ragged and far away, but Ajay stirs himself just enough to give a response.

“Sure,” he slurs past his fading consciousness. “Okay.” 

* * *

 

They take him to King’s Bridge, and they keep him there. Ajay insists he’s fine after a day, but the medic and Sabal (who is present intermittently) insist the opposite.

“Even if the drugs are out of your system, you’re still badly injured,” the medic tells him. “Your hand will heal, but it will take time, and your neck needed stitches. Too much stress on the injury could reopen it. You’re on bed rest until further notice.”

“Until further notice” includes giving up his radio and being monitored by every Golden Path member stationed at King’s Bridge. Any activity considered even remotely strenuous results in him being gently herded back towards the safehouse, out of range of distractions, activities, and any potential for eavesdropping on radio transmissions. After several attempts at escape, Ajay gives up, retiring to the safehouse voluntarily to try calming meditation. Perhaps he should have expected as much, but the meditation turns into a nap; a fact he realizes when he’s woken up by someone draping a blanket over his shoulders.

“How long was I asleep?” he asks, starting to get up. “Did something happen?”

“Nothing happened,” a familiar voice says with a chuckle, and Sabal’s hand presses on his shoulder, keeping him from rising. “My apologies, brother. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

Ajay realizes he’s still in a cross-legged meditation pose, and feels his cheeks start to heat. “It’s fine. I, uh – I didn’t mean to fall asleep – ”

“It happens to the best of us,” Sabal says with a laugh, sitting down beside him on the floor next to the bed. “Even to me, on occasion. Besides, I’m sure you need the rest.”

“I _need_ to be out there, helping people,” Ajay grumbles, making a vague gesture with his hand meant to indicate the country at large. “Seems like that’s the only thing I’m good for around here.”

He doesn’t mean to sound bitter, but that’s how it comes out, the words biting their way off his tongue and chewing a hole through the peaceful stillness of the safehouse. He hadn’t really meant to say them out loud, but now that he has, he doesn’t take them back, smiling at the floor in a manner that’s half sheepish and half resigned.

The floor doesn’t hold his attention for long; two fingers slide underneath his chin and apply pressure, turning his face towards their owner. Sabal makes deliberate eye contact for a long moment before his gaze slides down, glancing across the bandage on Ajay’s neck with infinite tenderness.

“Is that why you did this to yourself, brother?” he asks, his voice quiet and rough. “When you were hallucinating… me, did I tell you that you were worthless, that killing was the only skill you have?”

Ajay winces, confirms the tentative guess. “N… no.”

He doesn’t say anything else, and Sabal speaks into the telling silence.

“I said other things, then.” His fingers leave Ajay’s face, curl gently around the younger man’s injured hand. “Whatever it was, however real it seemed, know that it wasn’t – real, or true. I would never wish you harm, or trivialize your contributions to our cause.” His thumb brushes back and forth across crisp white bandages. “I value you, Ajay. Perhaps more than you know.”

Ajay shrugs, grimacing at the strain it puts on his neck wound. “You don’t have to butter me up, Sabal. I’m in this for the long haul now.” He sighs, brings up his other hand to run it through his hair. “I just – I hope my mother understands.”

“I’m sure she would be proud of you,” Sabal insists, his grip on Ajay’s hand tightening slightly. “As would your father. You’re doing the right thing.”

“I hope so,” Ajay responds sheepishly. “It’s just – sometimes it would be nice to have a sign, you know? Some indication that I’m headed in the right direction.” He laughs, turning to look over at Sabal. “Other than drugged-up suicide attempts and tiger attacks and being shot at, you know?”

“I know,” Sabal murmurs, his gaze flickering across Ajay’s finely sculpted features before coming to a rest. “Perhaps this will serve as an acceptable sign.”

Ajay realizes that the leader of the Golden Path has been looking at his mouth at the same moment Sabal leans into him and presses a kiss to his lips. Unlike the hallucination, a kiss from the real thing is wet – not sloppy, but certainly not dry, in a way that makes it clear that it’s real and accentuates the way Sabal lets it linger before finally pulling back.

Ajay lets out a slightly incredulous chuckle, the sound more of a simple expulsion of air than it is an actual laugh. “Wow. The, uh, the fake you didn’t do that. Not exactly.”

“Not exactly?” Sabal repeats, looking at Ajay with an intensity that speaks to an underlying uncertainty in his recent actions.

“Yeah. He, uh… the only real one, I guess, was here.” Ajay looks down, turning over the hand that Sabal still holds and tracing a finger across the base of his wrist. “I mean, it wasn’t _real_ , but – ”

The words die in his throat as Sabal brings it up to his mouth and _makes_ it real, heat pooling in the veins there and spreading up into his fingers. Then his hand is vibrating in Sabal’s touch, lips whispering against his palm as the older man speaks into it.

“Where else did he touch you?” Sabal asks roughly, the words clearly audible but his tone indistinguishable.

“I – uh – ” The fingers of Ajay’s injured hand twitch inward. “A lot – a lot of places, but the only other kiss was, uh. I thought… on my neck.”

Sabal is silent for a long moment, and then he asks the question hanging between them like a knife. “Is that why you hurt yourself? Because he – because _I_ – ”

“ _No_ ,” Ajay blurts, leaning forward and then subsiding with a grimace as the movement strains his neck injury. “No, I didn’t even realize I was – the hallucination, he, uh, I thought he was going to kiss me and then he – bit me. I wasn’t – I wouldn’t – ”

He doesn’t realize he’s working himself up into a panic until Sabal cuts him and his rising emotions off, capturing his lips in another kiss. This one is deeper than the last, pressing Ajay back into the bedframe he’s seated against. The older man repositions himself to have better access to the son of Mohan’s mouth, swinging one leg over dirty dark blue jeans so that he’s straddling Ajay’s lap.

“I was so afraid,” he gasps, breaking the kiss only to feather smaller ones along the line of Ajay’s jaw. “You sounded so disoriented on the radio, and when I got to you, you were – the _blood_ – ”

“I’m alright,” Ajay murmurs. He’s not sure what to do with himself, so he simply remains still, feeling the weight of Sabal’s hands as he moves them across Ajay’s chest and stomach. “Whatever Yuma hit me with really messed me up, but I’m alright now.”

“You tried to _kill yourself_ ,” Sabal snarls, and it hits Ajay for the first time that this genuinely affected the other man, is continuing to affect him. “You cut your own throat while imagining that I was _biting it open_. And don’t think that I didn’t hear what you said, brother. Whatever demonic version of me you were hallucinating told you that I wanted you to _die_. I can’t imagine what that must have been like – how you can stand to have me here, now, touching you like this– ”

“Well, I knew it wasn’t you,” Ajay says, a little confused. “I know _you_ from – from _Yuma’s_ you.”

Sabal stills, then pushes back to look into his eyes. “There are few who would know or care to make that distinction,” he responds softly. “Ajay Ghale, you are truly one of a kind.”

“I don’t know if I’d say that,” Ajay answers him, startled.

“I would,” Sabal rasps, running his hands through the son of Mohan’s hair. “I do. The day I found you, rescued you from de Pleur’s fortress – that was fate. The fact that you _stayed_ , that you are still here, to fight by my side; _that_ is a blessing from Kyra. _You_ are – Ajay, you are _everything_.” Inhaling sharply, he presses his lips to the top of Ajay’s head, goes silent.

Ajay brings up a hand, lets his fingers toy with the collar of Sabal’s jacket. His gaze lingers on the silver crown pin attached to the older man’s left lapel, and without really thinking about it he leans in and kisses the cold metal.

“I’m just one man,” he responds softly. After a beat, he adds impulsively, “But I’m yours. If – if you want me.”

Sabal is silent, and just as Ajay’s face begins to burn, as he opens his mouth to apologize, the tips of two fingers are pressed against his chin, tilting his head up and back.

“I want no one more,” Sabal promises, and his gaze holds the promise of a future together, leading Kyrat to better and brighter days.

As they share another kiss – this one deeper than any previous, more heated, the touch of lips tangled with that of roaming fingers – Ajay hears a whisper in his ear.

“He’s lying, you know.”

Ajay lets the older man pull him halfway up, push him back onto the bed, and murmurs back a bittersweet response within the confines of his mind.

_I know_.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading, please like comment and subscribe for more fanfics similar to this one


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